Letter: Are we spending our tax dollars wisely?

I have thought for some time that everything in Gaston County costs more than other surrounding areas and we receive less or sometimes equal services.

We recently paid my daughter’s auto property tax and city tax bill. Much to my surprise, I found that Gaston’s property tax is 62 percent higher than Wake County (.8700 versus .5340 per 100). My Cramerton city tax is 24 percent higher than Raleigh’s (.4750 versus .3826 per 100). Glad we registered her car in Raleigh.

My daughter received a very good education at South Point High School. But looking at our school system as a whole, we are rated average and below average on all the new tests. Our county leaders requested a $175 million bond issue in 2007, stating growth of 50 percent in our system. Our system has fewer students now than over 20 years ago, and the system did not grow any during this period. (I called and was told we have approximately 32,000 students K-12. We had 32,407 in 1987).

The only thing that has increased is the size of administration and spending on a new high school that has fewer than 500 students while Belmont Central is probably the most over crowed in the system.

We’re told that we need more than $125 million for repairs to the schools in the system after spending more than $90 million on the new high school and two other repairs. The school board has not spent approximately $90 million of the bond issue and said that no other schools would be built in the immediate future.

We have needs for repairs on schools and appoint as a new superintendent, the person over building maintenance. We needed an educator, but got an accountant.

Now, we are told that they want to build a Belmont Middle School on the property in Cramerton. Guess that makes sense, because they just built a Mount Holly High School in Cramerton .

Why not build the middle school in Cramerton , where 95 percent of the student will come from Belmont and surrounding areas? Let’s leave common sense and fiscal responsibility out of the decision making. We are spending more and getting less!

Thurman Linker Cramerton

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